1st Grade: Lesson 4 (February) Art Masterpiece: Yellow Horse and Black Bull at
Lascaux Caves in France
Keywords: Prehistoric Art, Texture, Symbol
Activity: Prehistoric Stone Age Art
About the Art:
• The Lascaux Caves in France were discovered accidentally in 1940 by
children while they were playing with their dog. Two boys sent their dog
to retrieve a ball and came upon an underground cave. Deep within the
cave, paintings were found that are now thought to be the very first
artwork created by people.
o Petroglyph: An image that is carved or chipped into the rock using
another stone or other tool, or may be painted on a rock using handmade paints and brush tools.
• Who were these early artists? The cavemen lived some 30,000 years ago.
By the light of oil lamps, Prehistoric artists drew these wild animals, such
as bison and mammoths on the wall of caves in Lascaux, France. Most
scientists believe they painted these animals because they hunted them
for food to feed their colony/tribe, or captured them to tame them to
use for farming.
1st Grade: Lesson 4 (February) • These cave paintings are 17,300 years old and include more than 2000
drawings/paintings of animals, people and handprints. Some scientists
believe the handprints were the artists’ signature. Some drawings also
included spears and arrows that were used in hunting.
• Using charcoal, they traced the outlines of bison and mammoths on the
cave walls. For paint, they ground lumps of earth and rocks into colored
powder. They mixed it with oil, and spread this powder with homemade
brushes made of leaves or wads of fur.
• These early painters used the entire surface of the rock within the cave.
If you look closely, paintings are overlapping each other, which suggests
to scientists that these paintings spanned many generations of
colonies/tribes.
Possible Questions:
• Why do you think people drew these pictures thousands of years ago?
(storytelling, hunting, war)
• What texture do you think the cave wall felt like?
• What animals and figures do you see?
• What did the cave artists draw with? (fur, leaves, sticks)
• What colors did the artists use? (black, brown, gray, yellow, red,
orange)
• How did the cave artists make paint? (They ground earth, rocks, &
minerals into powder and mixed with water to form a paint.)
• How did the cavemen sign their artwork? (with a handprint)
• The cave artists used symbols to communicate their message. What is
a symbol?
1st Grade: Lesson 4 (February) Activity: Prehistoric Stone Age Art
1) Prior to beginning project, pass out the laminated petroglyph image
pages and discuss how you can create a story out of these symbols.
2) Pass out the brown paper. Have the students tear off little bits of
paper from the edges to make it look authentic. Uneven edges are
great! Throw away the scraps of paper. Then have the students
crumple up their paper into a ball and gently smooth it out again. This is
their “cave wall.” If a student’s brown paper accidentally rips down the
middle, they can start over with a new piece. The brown paper is very
inexpensive. Have students write their names on the back with crayon.
3) Starting with a large black crayon, have students draw the body of an
animal. An oval is good shape to begin with, something similar to the
shape of a jellybean. Have them add a neck, head, legs, horns, tails, etc.
4) Then pass out the colored chalk, and have the students fill in the
animal with chalk. Color the space around the animal by lightly using the
side of the chalk. Add designs, stripes, background, etc. Use as many
colors as desired. Leaves, trees, water, clouds, sky, etc. are fun to add.
5) Students can think of a story about their animal and add other
petroglyph symbols to portray their story.
6) Spray the artwork with hairspray to keep the chalk from smearing.
Artwork can be sent home in plastic grocery sacks to prevent chalk
transfer to clothing and backpacks.
Materials Needed:
• Brown paper bags or brown shipping paper cut or ripped into
approximate 10 x 12-inch rectangles (does not need to be exact)
• Petroglyph image examples
• Large black crayons
• Colored drawing chalk
• Aerosol hairspray
• Baby Wipes
• Plastic grocery sacks (to carry artwork home in)
1st Grade: Lesson 4 (February) Artwork Examples: